Two adult Finnish records in athletics were erased from history on Wednesday.
The Finnish Sports Confederation announced on Wednesday that it will switch to the World Athletics practice of the International Athletics Federation when recording Finnish records from the beginning of May.
SUL’s competition committee decided that the results from 1998 retroactively count as SE results. At that time, the International Association of Athletics Federations decided to change the outdoor track and indoor results of field sports to equal value. In Finland, the board results have been quoted as Finnish records since 2016, but no retroactive changes were made to SE results at that time.
SUL’s decision on Wednesday meant that the shot putter Reijo Ståhlberg and high jumpers Mika Polku and Toni Huikuri lose their SE.
Until today, Polku and Huikuri owned the SE 231 of the high-altitude outdoor tracks, which Polku crossed in 2002 and Huikuri two years later. In the future, it will be the only SE Osku Torron 233 exceeded in the hall in 2011.
In Kuula, Ståhlberg’s 21.69 in the USA would have turned 45 years old on May 5. Now the SE letter combination is only appended Mika Halvarin to the record of 22.09, which he set at the Tampere WC Indoor Games in 2000.
– In principle, of course, the longest push should be SE, but I do not accept cabinet decisions, says Ståhlberg, reached by phone.
Ståhlberg doesn’t think it makes sense to put outdoor track and indoor records on the same line. The reason he cites is that the competitive conditions prevailing in the hall are always more even than the outdoor fields.
– In that sense, inside is better. However, the differences are not insanely large.
Ståhlberg gives SUL a thumbs up, but isn’t going to lose sleep over losing SE.
– He (Halvari) is now an SE man with such a great cabinet decision, and that’s cool… Good luck.
Both Ståhlberg and Halvari belong to the 20-meter club, in which the shot putter’s record must be at least 20 meters. The club has 21 pushers. The newest member, who broke twenty for the first time in 2015 and pushed 20.30 at his best Arttu Kangas ended his career at the end of 2021.
So far, only one Finnish pusher has crossed the 19-meter mark in the 2020s. Arttu Korkeasalo pushed the readings to 19.02 in January 2023. The best outdoor track result in the current decade is Korkeasalon’s 18.93 from summer 2021.
Last summer Arsi Harjun coached by Nico Oksanen pushed the domestic top result to 18.75. Oksanen was 167th in the world statistics and 69th in the European statistics.
According to Ståhlberg, the changed SE markings will not be on the agenda at the next meeting of the 20 meter club.
– The topics of the discussion are only how we can get Finnish shot put back to its former level and recruit new enthusiasts to the sport. They are serious discussions. These old results don’t matter.
– These union decisions have never had anything to do with the real world, says Ståhlberg.